hilbert42

Unfortunately, Photoshop is easier to use than GIMP, it's ergonomically more functional. This is lost on GIMP's developers (see my other post).

There's good reason why people are annoyed with GIMP/GIMP developers.

For example, I used to use GIMP and became quite expert at it and would often swap between it and Photoshop. That changed when GIMP's developers removed the Fade feature (similar functionality as in Photoshop). The result is that they turned a perfectly functional program into a clunky mess that was ergonomically horrible to use. Using it was now like going from a modern auto gearbox back to a clunky manual.

Their rationale was that fading was better done by layers and such. Technically that's likely so (depending on what one's doing) but for the rest of us who were happy with the Photoshop-like Fade GIMP suddenly became useless.

GIMP's developers are more interested in some strange notion of technical purity than providing good ergonomic software that ordinary users can use. In short, GIMP's just a play toy for them, benefitting the opensource world isn't on their horizon.

Sure, as GIMP's developers they have the right to fuck up their software, what they don't have the right to do is fuck up bona fide users who've spent a large investment in learning the product by essentially making the product unusable.

Keep away from GIMP, as others have said there are much better alternatives now available.

"Case in point, ReactOS is far behind what Windows 11 is capable of, …"

More importantly, as I've mentioned, ReactOS is not stable nor reliable enough to even use as an offline O/S sans the Win 11 dross.

If these stability/compatibility issues were fixed then it'd develop a reputation for being reliable which would lead to further development work.

Unfortunately for everyone except Microsoft this is not the case.

"…the interior not yet"

Right, there is a long tradition in it taking centuries to build great cathedrals, Chartres, Notre Dame, etc.

I've little issue with that, however taking so long to build something such as an O/S that it's obsoleted itself many times over before being finished is another matter altogether.

"Or perhaps a specialized variant of ReactOS with that focus in mind."

Trouble is there's never been enough interest in ReactOS to get it to the point where it's stable let alone warrant fancy extras. (After three decades of trying to clone the basics and failing is proof enough.)

In short, developers see it as a dead end. Why there's so little interest I've never fully understood, but it's fact.

If it were actually stable and usable as a basic operating system it could be used for lots of offline stuff but it's not—even at this point. If it were useable I'd readily adopt it to use offline (I've tried many times and failed).

Another point, this lack of interest shows up on ReactOS's website; there's so little new news and info the site may as well be dead.

What is left when all other options are exhausted?

The American War of Independence, French Revolution and English Civil War were acts of terrorism.

Were those acts justified? Not if you're the ones who were initially holding the power.

I've not scanned them, I'd have to find them first and that's not easy at moment because they're among tens of thousands of docs that need sorting (I rarely chuck out docs like that).

How I came by them was by accident when I was helping a guy who was a worse (indiscriminate) hoarder than I am move his tooling and machining factory. He hoarded anything technical, especially electronics stuff.

He didn't know what the circuits were but I did. Despite having little interest in either the modules or circuits instinct made me rescue them (it's a fluke they weren't scrapped). Reason: I once recall hundreds of these modules flooding onto the auction market and no one wanting them except for the tubes so I assumed everyone who'd be interested was already in the know.

The circuits (if I recall correctly—the factory move was in 2012) were together in a big folder a bit too big to scan on a quarto/A4 scanner.

Incidentally, there were stacks of old IBM computer racks that IBM historical people had rescued earlier (presumably the modules were from the same computer) but the modules and circuits surfaced later and never ended up with the rest of the hardware.

I'd be very surprised if others don't possess copies of those folders of circuits (computer historical societies etc.) as at one time those modules were so ubiquitous.

Seeing there's interest I'll hone in on them as I sort through the files (I know roughly what room they're in). The moment I find them I'll put them on line.

In the meantime I'd urge you to seek out copies of those circuit folders. IBM documented everything so well, their manuals were masterpieces of documentation in their own right (unlike the terrible situation of today where tech info on products is as scarce as hen's teeth).

Re museum, I'm in Australia so I'll seek out the mob who took the racks and try to mate the modules with the rest of the H/W. Thanks for the offer.

I still have well over a dozen of those IBM modules together with their paperwork and circuit diagrams (somewhere in my miles of files).

They've been getting in the way and I've been meaning to chuck them away on many an occasion but something inside me has stopped me doing so because of their possible historical value.

Shirriff's blog has reinforced my thinking, they'll just have to clutter up my place for a little longer methinks.

For the cognoscenti it is—like Linux, but for the vast majority it's not. If you've ever run an IT department in a large operation (which I have) then you'd never say that.

People insist on Windows at work because it's so ubiquitous, when they go home their modus operandi doesn't have to change.

Forcing workers to change OSes against their will only puts one's job on the line (management will side with workers as it's the path of least resistance). QED.

Microsoft is effectively a monopoly, to say it's anything else and that other browsers are available is a nonsense for reasons that everyone knows.

Appealing to reason is a waste of time as no big monopolistic corporation will willingly forfeit money. The only realistic (effective) solution is legislative. I don't see that happening anytime soon in the US but perhaps it's possible in other jurisdictions (more likely now that the US is no longer the flavor of the month with many).

Increasing taxes on exploitive mining multinationals that get minerals, coal and gas for a fraction of its worth and make a financial killing at the expense of the Australian public would have been much more popular but the timid Government wouldn't have dared fearing the backlash.

Simply, this shows who's actually in charge of the Country and it's not the Government.

I can play Bach to some extent with practice. I'd qualify that though by saying a multi-part fugue from say The Musical Offering would be a tall order.

I've never had any pretense at being good enough to entertain people with those works as everyone knows them so well (from professional recordings). Even Mozart's a problem here. For example the Romance in the D Minor Concerto, K.466 looks deceptively simple (at least in parts) but it's anything but after hearing someone like Brendel play it. Everyone knows it so well it's not worth the embarrassment of even trying (except perhaps in secret).

(Mozart has a habit of looking simple until one tries to play it, Bach is none of that—one knows what one's in for at pretty much first glance.)

I'm left-handed too and frankly a left-handed mouse is a nuisance and awkward to use (I never use one), same with other peripherals.

Still I prefer to use scissors with the left hand and most are right-handed. It's a damn nuisance as the loop handles are the wrong way around/wrong size for a leftie.

Very true, see my comment playing piano as a left-hander.

See my comment, I'm much better at playing with my less dominant hand (even after many years).

It's interesting that the piano is essentially a right handed instrument in that melody/the main theme is mostly played by the right hand.

As a left-hander, it's very obvious to me. That said—because of the above point—my right hand is much stronger and more adept at playing. In short, I'm right handed when playing the piano.

No sarcastic comments please, I well know more practice and playing those damn Czerny scales ad nauseam would have restored proper balance. :-)

Seems to me we're going to have to let the anti-encryption mob have their way until things go wrong—bigtime. No amount of expert advice will convince them until they witness firsthand the negative consequences of weakening encryption.

It's only afterwards and as a consequence some highly newsworthy disasters occur such as a child abduction or political sex scandal involving a high profile politician come to light that the lay public will get the message that weak encryption is effectively no encryption.

In the meantime criminals will be early adopters of more sophisticated messaging such as steganography.

A truly great communicator, we need more like him.

Fascinating development. That means much, much greater control over ink deposition.

No doubt a potential worry for currency producers. Inkjets that have control over the physical build up of ink structure would pose an even greater threat of counterfeiting.

No doubt mints can introduce countermeasures to detect such threats but I'd suggest this tech (if perfected) will likely be too good for humans to detect a forgery at a glance. Reckon machine readers will become the order of the day, that's if physical paper/plastic currency continues to exist.

Stats—the number killed per annum through failure—will determine the true effectiveness of this change.

In the meantime, I'll continue to rely on the physical movement of full atoms for my braking. Electrons without an accompanying nucleus tend to be more fickle.

I'd agree with this assessment. Moreover, if developers were to stick with the eminently satisfactory CUA (IBM's Common User Access) interface standard and further regularize that then things would be much easier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access

If developers want to experiment with various UI configs then let them but keep a CUA in the background that can be called upon by machines and humans alike. (Unfortunately, ergonomics has never been a strong point for developers.)

Try 'teaching calculus to a dog', it's easier to visualize.

"…I never was someone who could stop asking “why?”"

When a kid of about four I found a pair of WWII headphones and took them to my father who pulled out the iron diaphragm and showed me magnetism at work—somehow some magical force was pulling the diaphragm back into the headphone with seemingly nothing in between. Absolutely fascinated, I wanted to know what this invisible 'magic' was. Many decades later every time I look at my fridge magnets I still ask the same question and I don't believe I'm much closer to the truth!

Sure, there are the simple answers everyone's taught, then there's QFT but even that doesn't tell me exactly what's going on. And why does alpha have the value it does, and why exactly does c = 1/(μ0ε0)^1/2? Not knowing and not being able to figure these questions out is, at times, infuriating.

For me, solace of sorts can be found in engineering—I can build an electronic circuit and end up with a tangible working device. On the way I'll curse my electrons for making so much noise that they sound like ball bearings rattling around in an empty oil drum but I'll eventually calm down and apply Johnson–Nyquist to shut them up (well, a little bit anyway).

Incidentally, in my post below on the MIT RadLab series I mention Vol 23. On p183 parasitic oscillation is mentioned. Also, I recall when working in the now defunct RCA prototype lab, one of the main cure-alls for parasitic oscillations was to place a ferrite bead on a transistor lead (between it and the PWA). It often worked wonders.

"The first time I saw all the decoupling caps rendered in a single chain on the side of the diagram I was mightily confused…"

If you've read my other comments here you'll realize I'm concerned that these days EE training doesn't place a strong enough emphasis on shielding, ground loops, decoupling and such that it ought to. For any electrical/electronic engineer these are critical concepts.

By way of stressing that I'd like to take a sojourn into history and refer you to probably the greatest set of electronic engineering books ever produced: the MIT Radiation Laboratory Series — a massive 28 volume set written nearly 80 years ago to document electronics and microwave/radar research done during WWII.

Anyone seriously interested in electronics should be aware of this series. Yes, it's dated, heavily weighted towards vacuum tube technology (although klystrons and magnetrons are still current), and it lacks modern semiconductor tech, however this truly remarkable set contains a huge amount of information that's still very relevant today. Moreover, whilst it covers the topics in depth it does so at a level that can be easily understood by undergraduates (explanations are more general than today's very specialized textbooks).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Radiation_Laboratory_Serie...

Here you'll find links to the Internet Archive where the volumes can be downloaded. Specifically, I would refer you to Volume 23 - Microwave Receivers, — Chapter 6 Intermediate Frequency Amplifiers p155. Now turn to p182 and read 6-10 Practical Considerations.

Here's the PDF of V23:https://archive.org/download/mit-rad-lab-series-version-3/23...

This section on decoupling, shielding etc. is just as applicable to today's high speed digital circuits as it was back in WWII. Sure it needs updating but the fundamentals of screening and decoupling have not changed. What's important here is that these physical (analog) effects are set by the fundamental laws of physics, and circuits that do not take them into account will fail to work correctly.

Excellent training, especially the parasitic bit. Trouble is somehow many aren't taught that stuff nowadays.

"You learned when analogue circuitry was the norm. I learned when digital circuitry..."

What's not taught properly these days is that ALL electronics is analog at the physical/circuit level.

For you digital types that's OSI Model Layer 1 — Physical layer (look it up on Wiki). Nothing in electronics works unless that's working properly—ICs, tunnel diodes, transistors, inductors, resistors, capacitors, cables and antennas are all analog devices at that level. That includes the heart of the most advanced digital ICs. For example, the upper clock speeds in processors are limited by transit times/electron mobility, inter-electrode and stray capacitances, unwanted inductance, etc.—all of which are analog effects and they must be accounted for.

Like it or not, the physical analog world is alive and well! The Noughts & Ones Brigade unfortunately seems to have forgotten that fact.

Ah how things have changed. When I was learning electronics we mainly dealt with radio and TV circuits and just about the first lesson one learned was to keep leads short (reduce unwanted inductance) and use decoupling capacitors everywhere.

I recall some years later a young graduate engineer coming into my office with a rather involved circuit consisting of 30/40 TTL ICs and complaining that he'd double checked the circuit and it still didn't work. I took one look at his device then went to the draws of capacitors and handed him a handful of 0.1uF ceramic caps and told him to put them between the ICs' PS rail pins to ground which he did and to his amazement the circuit worked immediately.

He stood in amazement that I should have such insight so as to fix the problem at first glance.

How such critical knowledge can get lost in university training these days just amazes me.

Right, Purdue Pharma—the sleasebag Sacklers—were unethically pushing OxyContin (oxycodone) but the unethical tactics that Merck adopted in marketing its NSAID Vioxx seems to have been forgotten. Vioxx was withdrawn from the market and Merck paid out billions in law suits.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, the Vioxx scandal is every bit as big as the Purdue one. Check this Wiki (lawsuits): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rofecoxib

If you've time watch this YouTube video on Merck and the Vioxx scam (if you weren't aware of the facts you'd think you were in Palermo/Mafia territory): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K0GrFnOpJoU

Reckon you've just summed up the US health care system to a tee.